Nations Stepping Up Efforts
To Contain Deadly Ailment

The battle to control a world-wide respiratory ailment intensified, as Singapore shut its schools, Hong Kong mulled plans for a quarantine and China started to provide information that could help trace the deadly illness that has spread to three continents.

The steps mark a new level of alarm over what is known as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. As the Hong Kong government announced the number of suspected cases had increased by 29 in one day to reach 319, it evacuated its public library and acknowledged it was...